


Friend

by LadyKoori



Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-20
Updated: 2011-02-20
Packaged: 2017-10-15 19:10:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/164048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyKoori/pseuds/LadyKoori
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Friends can be found in strange places.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Friend

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place sometime after No Man’s Land.

It had been the second thing the girls had told her.

If he showed up to talk to a john, keep quiet, out of the way, but don’t bother hiding. He won’t hurt you, they had said. And they’d been right. He never had.

The first time she’d seen him she had only been on the job a few nights. She followed the john up into an old rundown hotel room. He’d opened the door and allowed her to step in front of him. The room wouldn’t have been worth remember save for the large figure that dominated it. The john had shrieked, and she’d been pushed with surprising gentleness out of the way as Batman kept the john from running from the room. She didn’t remember the conversation the two had had, just that the john had yelled at her to get out when Bats left. She’d kept his money.

A few months passed before she saw him again. That time a trick went sour. Very very sour. The john had been a large man, and when she’d been to slow for his liking he’d hit her. Hard. Over and over again. She’d screamed until she was hoarse, even though she had been convinced that there would be no help. Except, there had been help. A crashing noise had signaled his arrival. The beating the john had recived had been even more severe then her own.

The police weren’t even suggested.

He had wrapped her up in a sheet, lifted her out the window to the fire escape, held her to him with one arm, and leapt into the night. It hadn’t been fear that had caused her to wrap her arms around his waist, bury her face in his neck, yet she’d done it all the same. They didn’t go far before they landed. Her feet had barely hit pavement before he was carrying her around a corner and depositing her in the passenger sit of a menacing looking black car.

The car was remarkably quiet for the amount of power she can feel rumble through her seat. The drive was short and silent. She was lifted gently out of the seat. That time she had been able to enjoy the comfort of being in his strong arms. And what a comfort it had been. He’d carried her up a set of stairs and into the Park Row Clinic of Dr. Leslie Thompkins. She’d stayed at the clinic for three days, recovering and helping Dr. Thompkins with a few thing, and could have stayed longer but she’d gone back to her pimp.

A year or so later, she’d overheard some gang members discussing a trap they were setting for the Bat. At first she had told herself that he wouldn’t fall for something as simple was what they were planning. But it had nagged at her for several hours. The only way that she had at the time to get a hold of him was through Dr. Thompkins, and she hadn’t been really holding her breath about that panning out. But she had had to try. She hadn’t worried about the doctor not being at the clinic. She’d long before concluded the woman was rarely elsewhere. She told the doctor what she had over heard, her own heart clinching as the woman’s face turned instantly worried.

The doctor left her in an exam room for several minutes before coming back with instructions for her to meet him in a nearby alley. She had to wait longer then she had expected but he’d eventually shown up, nearly causing her to scream when he’d stepped out of the shadows. He’d listened quietly as she told him what she had heard. Then he’d pulled out an envelope and held it out for her. She’d taken it and discovered inside more money then she would make in a week. He hadn’t been standing there any longer when she looked up to protest.

They developed a routine. Her passing info to him, him paying her, even when she told him it wasn’t necessary.

Life continued.

She paid off her debt to her pimp and became a madam herself, taking in girls off the street and giving them someplace safe. They were still breaking the law ,of course. But the police mostly left her alone. They had bigger things to worry about and her girls were clean. They got medical exams and birth control. They got treatment for drug addictions. She tried to make this life as easy on them as possible. Sure, she could have made more money not caring about their welfare, but she’d been where they were once.

And Bats?

He obtained partners, first one then others. He never brought them with him when she met with him. But she still knew of them. She knew the Nightwing of ‘haven had been the first Robin. She also knew that the second one had been murder by Joker and that a third had taken on the mantle. She knew that something had happened to the first Batgirl, but had never heard what. She had known the times someone else had meet with her dressed as him, though she’d never mentioned it. She had simply been glad when he’d returned.

During No Man’s Land, she hadn’t been able to get her girls out of the city. They’d stayed cooped up, in the remains of the rundown apartment building she’d acquired a few years before. Tricks had been turned not for cash, but for food and other things to sustain life. The area gang had protected them until they’d been run out by other gang. That one hadn’t been so nice to them. And when their leader had been on the verge of raping her, Bats had saved her, again.

And now, Gotham was back to normal, and her business was booming.

The rooftops of Gotham spread out around her. A sea of concrete between the tides of petty crimes and the endless depths of the moonless night sky. For all this city had done to her, she still loved it. Home could not be imagined to be anywhere else but here.

The rustle was the only warning.

Years of this little game had taught her to hear him. She turned, slowly, and knew she did succeed at hiding her surprise. Robin stood next to him. He looked both older and younger then she’d always pictured.

“You have information for me,” the voice was as gruff as ever.

And she realizes she’s been staring at the boy longer then she intended. “Tommy Tellers has a shipment coming into the old warehouse at Adamms and Talley tomorrow night. Going to be lots of muscle.”

An envelope appeared in his hand.

She held up her own. “Tellers beat one of my girls.”

He nodded, and the envelope disappeared again. He turned to leave, and the boy followed but not before looking from his mentor to her a few times and shaking his head. Her lips turned up in the hint of a smile as she watched them leap off the roof. Teller’s beating would be more severe then perps usually got when they faced the Batman. That would be all the payment she needed.

She turned and went back into the building. Walking quietly through the halls, she stoped in on the girl Teller had beaten. She was only nineteen. Smiling at the girl, she changed the dressing on the worst wound just as Dr. Thompkins had shown her. Another smile and she slipped out of the room and went to her office. The business might not be legitimate but she still had bills to tend to. The old desk chair creaked loudly as she sat down. She pulled open the right hand drawer and shuffled a few papers to revel the signaler he’d given her. Its presence was one of the few reassurances she had in life.

The girls knew where it was, in case she wasn’t present at the time of an emergency. The cops would never come to help them. But the Bat would.

It was the second thing she told them.


End file.
